NNA -  Free Patriotic Movement Leader, MP Gebran Bassil, said today at the launching conference of the "Civil Lebanon Document Project" that "Civil Lebanon is the way to live together in a successful state, and we believe in Lebanon’s unity and that life together must remain the Lebanese’s choice, not just their destiny," adding that the failure of the state is caused by the bad system, and solutions to its crises lie in reforming it "and not in breaking the social contract between us."

"We have tried everything...from complete exclusion between 1990 and 2005, to exclusion from authority between 2005 and 2008, to participation in the authority; the result is that the only solution is to change the system or develop it, and our country is at a real crossroads, as the failure of the system has become a source of disintegration, but reforming it will be a way towards advancement which requires awareness, will, and joint action," Bassil underscored.

"We are a sovereign movement and we do not accept that the outside decides the future of our country. We warn the Lebanese that the lack of agreement between us on a successful and viable system will give the outside an excuse to impose on us what pleases them and secures their interests instead of our interests," he stressed.

The MP considered the recent crisis of smuggling Lebanese money abroad, refusing to return it, stealing depositors' money, and refusing to hold the perpetrators accountable are evidence of the greatest moral decay in Lebanon.

Bassil pledged that his party's corcern in the next Parliament would be about consolidating the civil state by working to bridge the gaps in the Constitution, completing the implementation and development of the National Accord Document, approving the expanded administrative and financial decentralization law, and approving a parliamentary electoral law according to proportionality in expanded districts.

========= R.K.